The manner in which the Pakistan
government dealt with an Air India plane en route from Abu Dhabi to
Delhi that had to make an emergency landing on Monday in the small town
of Nawabshehr in Sind province is to be welcomed but it would be
misleading to infer that this marks a radical departure as regards the
orientation of the 'deep-state' in Pakistan towards India.

The larger context in which Islamabad (seat of the civilian
dispensation) and Rawalpindi (GHQ of the military where actual power
rests) have made certain security and foreign policy choices is better
reflected in the regional events of early July. Two sets of differently
troubled bilateral relationships, namely that between India and Pakistan
on one hand and the US-Pakistan on the other, were reviewed over the
last week - with results that may be described as 'more of the same.'

On July 5, the foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan
ended inconclusively in Delhi against the backdrop of fresh revelations
about the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack. The handing over by the
Saudi authorities of one 26/11 suspect, Abu Jundal (aka Ansari), an
Indian Muslim citizen who was part of the LeT led attack on Mumbai, has
provided fresh evidence of Pakistani complicity. The cooperation and
coordination between India, Saudi Arabia and the US in apprehending a
26/11 suspect from Saudi territory has added to the dismay of Islamabad,
but predictably, there was no explicit reference to this matter in the
joint statement issued by the two countries after the foreign secretary
talks.

Concurrently, the severely strained relations between the US and
Pakistan were reset on July 3 with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
stating that she was 'sorry' for the death of Pakistani soldiers in the
November 2011 during a US air strike. The Pakistan government which had
sought an 'apology' from the US to assuage growing anti-American
sentiment, accepted this olive branch and agreed to resume the movement
of supply convoys that had been halted for the last seven months.

This compromise was expected since the Pentagon is critically dependent
on the Karachi-Afghanistan access to sustain its logistics supplies for
US troops in the region and to plan the re-location of huge inventory
and heavy equipment in the run-up to the 2014 withdrawal. It is evident
that some hard bargaining was done by both sides and while Pakistan has
not insisted on a higher price per truck, the US has agreed to release
to Islamabad direly needed funds that had been put on hold. The
opposition and the right-wing parties in Pakistan have threatened to
oppose this rapprochement.

However, this is an uneasy truce since the terror issue - or the support
to this malignancy that the Pakistani deep-state provides - has been
left to fester and this has implications for Delhi and the
India-Pakistan bilateral relationship. Rawalpindi, the HQ of the
Pakistan military, has not been persuaded to sever its links with the
Haqqani group in Afghanistan - which is of relevance to the US - and the
endorsement of terror units such as the LeT and its leader Hafeez Saeed
whose focus is India. Having compelled the US to 'blink' first on the
apology issue, there appears to be a sense of triumph within the
Pakistani 'deep-state' that it can continue with this policy of
selective support to terror groups and extremist ideologies even while
dealing with the sectarian forces that now challenge the Pakistani state
with impunity.

The confluence of certain dates in July over the last four decades merit
recall to place the two bilateral relations in perspective. On July 2,
1972 India and Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement and the salient
section of the preamble includes the following: 'That the two countries
are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through
bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed
upon between them. Pending the final settlement of any of the problems
between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the
situation and both shall prevent the organization, assistance or
encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful and
harmonious relations.'

The Simla Agreement remains the most magnanimous war termination accord
in recent history but regrettably 40 years later, a review of the spirit
of Simla is disappointing. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto reneged on the promises
made and in the years that followed, a deep anti-India orientation
became the dominant characteristic of Pakistan.

In keeping with its tumultuous history, on July 5, 1977, General Zia-ul
Haq seized power from Bhutto, who was subsequently sent to the gallows
on July 4, 1979. The steady and corrosive Islamisation of Pakistan began
under General Zia and this was compounded by the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan in late 1979 which in turn led to the US-Pakistan alliance
and the birth of the Kalashnikov-wielding, theologically motivated
mujahedin.

The US has made a Faustian bargain with the Pakistan military and,
notwithstanding the enormity of the Osama bin Laden episode which
demonstrated beyond doubt the duplicity of Rawalpindi apropos terrorism,
the US has chosen to accept this contradiction - as it did with the
A.Q. Khan revelations. The fact that Pakistan is in possession of
nuclear weapons and that this in turn resulted from extended
China-Pakistan cooperation which the US, during the Reagan years,
ignored due to compulsions in Afghanistan at the time is part of the
complex history of the Pentagon-Rawalpindi relationship.

The 'more of the same' syndrome is evident in the fact that in a US
election year, the Afghanistan card is back in play and President Obama
has little room to make any radical changes in US policy.

For India, the terror supporting strategy of the Pakistani military -
that was refined during the Zia years - will remain the abiding
challenge in the years ahead. More discerning voices in Pakistan are
deeply concerned but helpless to change the orientation of their own
guardians and as the Daily Times, Lahore, noted editorially (July 6):
'The ramifications of Zia's legacy have proved manifold and insidious.
The genie of extremism released from the bottle by him has given birth
over time to various jihadi groups operating in Pakistan with impunity,
with help from the deep state.'

India has to accept the grim reality that the spirit of Simla (July
1972) will remain elusive, while insulating itself from the distorted
malignancy that General Zia has bequeathed to his country.

(C. Uday Bhaskar is a well-known strategic analyst and visiting fellow,
National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi. He can be reached at cudayb@gmail.com. This article first appeared on New York Daily News on July 12)